Hip One Hop One, Acrylic on Canvas

Time to travel back to the early days at Spark Box to reflect on resident Susan Gardiner Bourlier. In 2009 Susan attended the residency as one of our Emerging Artist Award Winners. She had completed her studies as an architect but after working in the field for a short time realized that it wasn’t for her. Her passion was painting and so she quit her job and set out to work full time as an artist. This was when we met Susan. We could seriously relate to her drive and passion for the arts.

Command Break, Acrylic on Canvas

To give you a little glimpse into Susan’s personality I have posted this write-up found on her website:

“These are the words on a button that I found while living abroad in Barcelona.

 They resonated instantly, prompting me to spend the single euro required to acquire the souvenir. In the years since, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the button and the meaning of its words (or so I thought):

confusion is clarity

 Having spent a great deal of my life in a state of confusion, I think I found this reassuring – but also, and more importantly, true. Although it is one of many, small and inconspicuous, not particularly beautiful, and has no value as defined by the standards of our society, this small object has become a sort of talisman for me. It reminds me to trust my instincts, because they have never failed to steer me in the right direction. Even, or perhaps even more appropriately, when I found out that the line is not a philosophical revelation, but a humorous Spanish phrase, more accurately translated as:

this confusion is very clear

 A small, but significant difference.“

Push One Pull Two, Acrylic on Canvas

Push One Pull One, Acrylic on Canvas

Share this work with others:

Katie Bruce (right image taken by Katie)

This week was filled with work but also play. Residents Katie and Jane continued their pieces from last week. Katie brought in a new colour to her embroidery pieces which really highlight the embossed areas found in our old wood floors. Jane started a new print inspired by the many cat pictures she has up in her studio and also finished her prints from last week with glitter and sequins.

Jane Wiseheart

Kyle and I ran a private silkscreen workshop which went really well and we are happy to have two new open studio members at Spark Box because of it! We also met with Kristy from Pathways to Independence in Trenton and are going to be hosting a workshop with a group their later this month.

Cooking at From the Farm

This week also brought a lot of cooking and great food. My mother, sister, grandmother and I went to a cooking workshop at From the Farm where we learned the art of cooking Italian food. We made a four course meal during the four hour. We started with an artichoke dip, followed by handmade ravioli, the main course brought pesto wrapped pork with roasted fennel and arugula salad and finally an upside down apply cake. Amazing!

A Weekend Away

In addition to the cooking, printing and workshops of this week Kyle and I spent a lot of time outside. We went away for two days this past weekend to a friends cottage on the Kawartha Lakes. It was a great little break and a nice weekend with friends we don’t see very often.  We also starting working in the garden which is hard work but extremely rewarding.

Our Garden

Share this post:

The Lotus Eaters

Recent Queen’s University graduate Pansee Atta attended the Spark Box Residency this past February to work on a number of paintings.

Pansee’s work stems from her upbringing: “Having lived in 13 residences in 6 cities in 3 countries in 22 years, I have never had the privilege of calling one place home, or one tradition my own. Nevertheless, the internal conflict between my hybrid Egyptian upbringing and my Canadian influence has been a primary focus of my art.”

Catharsis

While staying with us she started several paper works for her New Gods series. This “series involves reworking mythologies to find archetypes that cross cultural boundaries. Linking culturally-specific images from different contexts that serve similar purposes for their respective communities.”

Totem 2

Totem

Share this post with others:

Katie Bruce taking an embossment of our floor

This week was packed full and left Kyle and I feeling a bit under the weather.

The week started with us happily welcoming our new residents Katie Bruce and Jane Wiseheart.

Katie Bruce joins us from Alberta and will be working on her delicate modified embossment pieces. This week she took an embossment of our living room floor and has started the embroidery element.

Jane Wiseheart, from Boston, drew out the stencils for her first silkscreen piece. If you think this part looks great wait until you see it with glitter! That’s right she “glitterfies” each work.

Intern Nick Taylor working on our new promo material

We also started working with our new graphic design intern Nick Taylor. Nick is a student at St. Lawrence College, he will be working with us for the next couple of weeks. This week he started putting together a new series of promotional material for our workshops, curio shop and open studio.

We got up to a number of other things this week like saying farewell to former Oeno Gallery staff member Ivan Tanzer who is off to work at the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal and hanging some of our new work at Angeline’s Inn for their photo shoot with Toronto Life.

As I mentioned before all of this activity left us both feeling a bit under the weather but I found some links that made me want to drink a big glass of OJ and get working:

-This awesome design magazine Udo Mag.

-Nell Casson’s inspiration for the mural painting for the outside of the studio– Steve Powers.

-My Pinterest Board for Green Spaces (I have also been working in the yard a lot recently … can’t wait to plant our garden)!

-This hilarious and awesome tumblr site by magazine editor Ann Friedman (found on Cup of Jo).

I hope this week is productive and fun!

-Chrissy

Please share this with others:

Fox Drop by Kristy Lynn

Cosmic Honey, Books Series, Kristy Lynn

Last week was Kristy Lynn’s final week with us.  She decided to add a little printmaking to the mix and finished two editions in silkscreen. Her prints turned out great (you can see them at the studio in our Curio Shop). We were really impressed the the number of pieces she completed while at the studio. While I was going through the updates she made to her website I noticed the image above, a page from her notebook, which made me feel so happy about the our home and studio.

Woodcut by Genna Kusch and Tamara Sponder

Woodcut by Genna Kusch and Tamara Sponder

Genna and Tamara, both friends from Queen’s, came down to work on a number of projects for the week. They had started a woodcut at the studio two years ago and finally completed it, they also began an installation project which I am curating with them and finally Tamara worked on a series of etching for her Littlest Print Exchange submission.

Workshop with Trenton High School

Workshop with Trenton High School

Near the end of the week we hosted the second half of the Trenton High School Etching Workshop. During this half the students came to the studio to print their etched copper plates. We taught them about the etching process, the inking process and how to use the intaglio press. They each had the chance to work with two different colours and chine-colle. All the students left with at least 6 – 8 prints. We were contacted afterwards by the teacher with a biggest thank you email and an invitation to be the keynote speakers at the school Art Awards (so nice).

To top it all off we got some time in on my nieces new trampoline when Kyle and I (plus two of the residents) went to her third birthday party.

Links for this week:

- I am hoping to get as good as these kids on the trampoline.

- I want to write a convincing letter to Printeresting so we can get a free can of their Gamblin Ink.

- This post made me pretty excited about planting a garden this year.

- I really love the paintings of Jules De Balincourt!

What a great week!

-Chrissy

Share this post with others:

Works in Progress by Kristy Lynn

Works in Progress by Sylvia Chan

This has been such a fun week. The weather was amazing and I felt inspired and productive. Early in the week we picked up our two new residents Kristy Lynn and Sylvia Chan. Both have been amazingly productive over the week resulting in a studio full of new paintings.

Works in Progress, New Linocut Prints by Kyle Topping

Kyle and I have both been putting a lot of focus on creating our own work. It’s amazing how challenging it can be to get into the studio. Kyle printed his vintage camera series early in the week (they will be going up on Etsy shortly) and began a new series of reductive linocut vintage trailers. I have been working on a new series of bags inspired by my trip around North America in 2008 (finally putting those pictures to use)!

Last week we also went to City of Craft in Toronto. It was so nice to head out of Picton for a day in the city. Ever since meeting Jen Anisef, creator of Toronto Craft Alert and former organizer for City of Craft, Kyle and I have all become interested in participating in sale.  When I found out there was a spring sale I was set on heading to Toronto to check it out. It was a rainy day but a nice afternoon of visiting some of my favorite regional makers:

*Kid Icarus who had these awesome 3D posters of flying Canadian Geese.

*Raymond E. Biesinger who had funky large scale geographic prints of different cities.

*JP King and Kirsten McCrea who had many great prints, postcards and little books of poetry.

* Lines by Davis who had his kitty cat printed bags and textiles, plus these new wax canvas bags (which I loved!).

*Bookhou who had their collection of clean and simply designed textiles (the large pouches are my favorite).

*Field Guided who had a selection of lovely silk scarves along with tote bags and prints.

Hope you had a great week too!

If you like these Ontario artisans perhaps others will too:

In September 2011 we hosted Philadelphia printmaker Josh Dannin at the residency. He stayed with us for a month and worked on two relief print pieces. Josh’s work “has evolved to feature a series of relief prints that comment on social and political turmoil. Much of [his] work touches on contemporary political gridlock and the absurdity of such a thing. In the form of dictator-like portraits, satirical caricatures, and bold text, [he] references the turbulent times of today. Citing words made famous by dystopian writers such as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, [he] is intrigued by how the themes these authors address increasingly parallel modern society. What originated as fiction has, in certain aspects, become reality.”

"Granny Smith", Linocut, 2011

“Not My Cup of Tea” and “Granny Smith” were the final pieces done by Josh at the studio. These works reflect some of his recent work which has  “…grown increasingly fascinated by the topic of evolution, and where it falls in political discourse. The close relationship between humans and chimpanzees is one that is confirmed by science yet remains debated among ideologies. The clash of Darwinism and Creationism, among other absurd political arguments, will act as a platform for future projects, in which he intends to experiment with print-based installation works.”

"Banana Republican", Woodcut, 2011

"Theory Of...", Linocut, 2011

Josh was a great resident and has remained a really good friend. Two weeks ago we had the chance to see the BFT Wolfbat project he worked on in New Orleans while we were down attending the Southern Graphics Conference (to read about that project click here >>). We hope to have Josh back to work in the studio again soon and wish him good luck with his MFA program he recently was accepted to.

"Wolfbat Box Car", Bill Fick, Carter Eggleston, and Josh Dannin, 2012

Wolfbat Box Car", Bill Fick, Carter Eggleston, and Josh Dannin, 2012

Share this post with others:

We recently attending an event organized by the Kingston Arts Council called Building Artist Communities. This event was a public forum in which the participants were seated, in groups, at different “topic” tables. Each topic addressed an issue found in most art communities– collaboration, funding, communication, space, etc. The event asked for each person to answer two questions in response to their tables “topic” and as a group discuss the answers. For example, Kyle and I sat at the Funding Table where we responded to the questions based on the topic of funding and discussed with the group issues with funding for the local arts community.

It was  a question brought up with this group which inspired me to write this post. It is a well-known fact that arts organizations and independent artists are often searching for funding to start projects, access space, etc. It is also known that the federal, provincial and municipal arts councils offer funding options but that this money is difficult to access because of the number of applicants and limited funds to disperse. The question asked was essentially, what other options do you we have as artists and arts organizations?

The first thing that came to my mind was crowdfunding, but to my surprise no one else at the table knew what this was. Obviously I realized this would be a perfect Business Art post as crowdfunding is a great way to access funds and use the amazing networking power of social media. Crowdfunding “describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.” (Wikipedia). As you can probably imagine this is an excellent way to get your ideas out to a large audience, heighten interest in your creative venture and gain support and funding from real people who are interested in what you are doing.  I was going to do my best to explain crowdfunding but then I found a post on The Small Business Blog which provides much more insightful information about the process then I would have been able to. As well the Small Business Blog posted a link to the  infographic found at the end of this post (just click the image below to make it larger), which was commissioned by PleaseFund.Us in collaboration with Crowdsourcing.org and designed by Dorothy Sanders of Sandfishdesign.co.uk, which provides all the information about this amazing funding opportunity. I want to thank Dorothy for allowing me to use her graphic to give you all a new way to think about fundraising and financing your creative projects!

If you found this information helpful please share it with others:

For the past three years we have been given the opportunity to have the students of the Loyalist College Art and Design Foundations Program come to our studio to learn acrylic resist etching. As with prior years the workshop this February was a great success. There were over 30 people working in the studio but by having organized the space with inking station, drypoint stations, printing stations and drying stations each student had a chance to experiment and print a number of times.

With past workshops Kyle and I would prep all of the plates for the students, which meant cutting the copper, file the edges, degrease the copper and apply the hard ground resist. But since Kyle and I are teaching in the program this year we had the chance to show the class how to prep plates and coat them with the hard ground. Although this is not the most interesting part of the process it was great for us to share this step ( it is pretty crucial step to the etching process). There is always the fear with acrylic resist etching that degrease process was not done properly, potentially causing the hard ground not to adhere to the copper. Luckily each student did a great job applying their ground and not one plate was lost in the etching process.

The students had one week to draw their image onto their plates, after which they were brought to the studio where Kyle and I etched them and prepped them for printing. The workshop only ran for three hours and within that time 90 prints were made by the class.

*Above print done by Colleene Rowley

If you liked this post share it with others:

Kyle and I just finished a bunch of new work for our two-person exhibit at the John M. Parrott Art Gallery. For this show we decided to create a new body of printed work. Kyle took a very traditional approach working with copper plate etchings while I took a more experimental approach combining silkscreen with encaustic painting and collage with watercolour monoprints. For this post I wanted to write about the monoprint because I think monoprint is a pretty unappreciated technique.

I first tried monoprinting when I was attending Queen’s. Our second year print professor, Jan Winton, had us work in this process for several months. With the pressure to pull great prints that would later be judged by faculty and fellow students I was easily frustrated with this painterly print method. Having worked mostly with paint prior to this experience I expected monoprinting to be no sweat but there was more to it then just putting ink onto copper. I quickly started to appreciate the attention to colour required and the way positive and negative space needed to be approached. You really have to consider space, layers, collage and texture so much more than with a painting. The “surprise” element that comes along with printmaking was also something that took some time to get used to but also became a highlight to this process.

Since that class I have used monoprint sparingly in my work– introducing it from time to time to bring a bit more life to my etchings. However, for this latest series of work I used it as one of my primary methods. Instead of using ink I choose to use watercolours. While this process takes a bit more time I wanted the washy, transparent qualities you can achieve with watercolour paints. I took the prints cut them up and collaged them together, finalizing them with embroidery and stitching (sorry for the terrible image once I have others I will update this post).

I appreciate what can be learned from monoprinting as a beginner. During my second year I was unsure why Jan had decided to start with monoprint rather than something “cooler” like silkscreen but now I can see her reasoning. Printmaking takes so much more planning, consideration and attention. Each step significantly effects the end result. Since monoprinting is a much faster and more forgiving technique than most other processes it gives you the chance to play around in the print studio. This speed allows you t understand the printing inks, to use a printing press and to consider how colour, layering, pressure and paper play a huge roll in the final print.

If you are interested in learning about monoprint consider signing-up for a workshop (find out more by clicking HERE).

If you liked this post others might too: